“Was It Good for You?”: Reply to Commentaries

Abstract

In many ways, psychoanalysis revolutionized attitudes about sexuality. Yet by undertheorizing female erotic passion and downplaying the role of the clitoris, psychoanalysis perpetuated a long historical tradition of denying essential aspects of women's sexual experience. Psychoanalysis has at times contributed to women perceiving their own bodily erotic excitement as frightening, dangerous, and out of control. In this reply to the commentaries, the authors continue to explore the ways in which women and women's experience, especially their embodied sexual experience, are so often rendered invisible.